Intel adds MPU market momentum, but AMD makes long-term gains

About half of AMD’s long-term growth came at the expense of Intel, iSuppli reported, adding that the remainder came out of the market-share of smaller suppliers.

By Suzanne Deffree, Managing Editor, News -- Electronic News, 7/2/2008

Intel Corp is still by far the MPU market share leader, but Advanced Micro Devices Inc is continuing its long-term gains, some of which have come at Intel’s expense.

According to iSuppli Corp Intel in Q1 accounted for 79.7% of global microprocessor revenue, up 1.2% points from 78.5% in Q4 2007 but down 0.7% year over year.
 
Meanwhile, AMD, which owned 13% of global MPU revenue in Q1, saw its share slip 1.1% points from 14.1% in Q4 but climb 2.2% year over year.

“Intel was the short-term winner in the first quarter microprocessor market,” Matthew Wilkins (pictured left), iSuppli’s compute platforms principal analyst, said in a statement. “But over the previous 12-month period, the trend is reversed, with AMD growing its share.”

About half of AMD’s long-term growth came at the expense of Intel, iSuppli reported, adding that the remainder came out of the market-share of smaller suppliers.

“AMD’s PC microprocessor product portfolio has become much stronger during the last year, particularly on the desktop side,” Wilkins continued. “Customers clearly are responding to AMD’s moves. At the beginning of the year we saw AMD add the quad-core Phenom microprocessors to its desktop portfolio, which it has since built on with tri-core and dual-core flavors, for the prosumer and business markets.”
 
iSuppli optimistic on Q1

Describing Q1 as “better than expected,” iSuppli said the quarter’s results were encouraging for the PC market. Global PC unit shipments rose to 69.9 million units in Q1, up 12.1% from 62.4 million in Q1 2007.

Not surprisingly, notebooks out shipped desktops in the March quarter. Notebook shipments grew more than 30% compared to Q1 2007, while desktop PC shipments in Q1 were essentially flat year over year. The research company’s latest global PC forecast calls for unit shipment growth of 10.5% in 2008.
 
ISuppli said that the MPU market reflected the “robust demand situation,” with both Intel and AMD noting that their ASPs (average selling prices) did not decrease in Q1 on a sequential basis. “This price stability is another indication that price pressure has decreased and the pricing war between the two microprocessor suppliers has abated,” the research company said. ISuppli had previously warned that a continuation of the price war between the two rivals would keep revenue gains for all MPU market players down.

Intel and AMD in Q1 continued to gain share at the expense of smaller players in the market. Combined, AMD and Intel accounted for 92.7% of total microprocessor revenues in Q1, up 1.4% from Q1 2007, iSuppli data showed.